A winning card played by capcom, Breath of Fire II is a must for any RPG enthusiast
The story-line begins in the shallows, not explaining very much but slowly building and building in complexity until the final epic ending (which can go two ways, depending on how you played).
The Games protagonist is silent, but this allows you to fill in the blanks and to an extent create the main character with your imagination. The other characters are introduced piece by piece in a variety of different ways which is something not seen in many modern games, even today it still has very original, engaging ideas.
The story starts with the child Hero (who is canonically named 'Ryu' although it can be anything you choose) going out to find his little sister, as you talk to the townsfolk you begin to get bits and pieces of backstory about who you are. Your father many years ago fought off hordes of demons attacking the town of Gate (where you live), in the battle your mother died and a dragon mysteriously appeared and saved the town. The dragon has ever since slept atop the nearby mountain.
You leave the town and head towards the mountain where you find your sister, her and your father return to the village while you stay behind to see the dragon. When you finally return to the village there is a huge twist and the story begins to pull you in.
This game is obviously not for every audience, the people best suited to it are probably those who value story-line over gameplay and who can handle a bit of a grind. The games main problems reside in its great stretches of leveling and repetitive combat system. Apart from this however the game delivers like one of the best RPGs ever.
The playable characters are numerous and each one is given a fair amount of backstory (although each in different ways), for example one character is met as a boss and will later join the party, while another is introduced as a from and later gets turned into... well... a bigger frog.
The characters will develop throughout the game and some will appeal to certain audiences while others will appeal to other audiences. It is almost guaranteed however that at least one of the party members will appeal to any player of the game.
There is a 4 party member limit in the game which means you will be choosing between the best combat members and your favorite characters (because only party members get exp, anyone not in your party at the time will have to be leveled separately). In this respect the game is like a fantasy KotOR or Neverwinter Nights style of game, just one with a less sophisticated engine.
The game also offers some new ideas that probably haven't ever been seen in any other RPGs (except the sequels). These include the town building system which is, while being fairly simple, is a good use of the gameboys memory. Essentially the town building starts with a quest that you have to complete; once you have, depending on how successful you were in the quest, you will have different builders available to you; these will change the design of the town. Later on you also have the option to expand your town.
On top of this you can travel around the world and meet NPCs who will come to live in your town, these have different specialties ranging from selling items to playing mini-games to win rewards.
The other fairly unique system is the shaman system which allows you to merge your various perty members with elemental shamans to varying degree of effectiveness. There are six shamans in all and up to two can be fused with any party member at any time. Firstly any shaman fused with a party member will bestow upon that character various abilities or increased stats, on top of this two shamans can be fused with a character and this will result in an even greater level of change in the character. There are certain combonations that just wont work, the shaman and character just wont merge and by the same token there are some shamans that will cause extra-effective reactons with the characters and these will give them a sprite change, stat change and spell/ability change. These can be extreemly cool depending on which character they are used on.
Overall the game gives a five star impression but also leaves you wanting more, the incredibly complex storyline with have you trapped from the instant you start playing and will pull you deeper and deeper until you finish the game (which can be anything from 15 to a meaty 100 hours depending on how you go about playing it). Anyone who is into literature, Fanfics, novels and such would almost definatly enjoy this game like a toasty warm jumper on a cold day (you know what I mean).
Overall it more than deserves it rating, the only thing keeping it from a ten being it's repetitive combat and level grinding. If you can push these aside however the engaging plot and lovable host of characters will grip you right through to the end. A winning card played by capcom, Breath of Fire II is a must for any RPG enthusiast.